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It is not easy to accept your age in our time, which seems to appreciate only what is associated with youth. And yet it is possible. No, do not reconcile yourself and do not stand to the last, but learn to consciously go through each stage of life, prepare for changes and rediscover yourself in them.
“Several years ago I was at the presentation of Dior. Then Sharon Stone was her face,” says Anastasia Kharitonova, director of the Beauty and Health department of Marie Claire magazine. – When she appeared on the stage of the Maly Theater, the audience gasped: impeccably slender, in a snow-white trouser suit, in high heels …
I still don’t understand how it was possible to look like this at fifty! The most important thing is that with such a flourishing appearance, she did not at all try to look younger: neither in behavior, nor in words. Her philosophy is attention to oneself, a positive coming from within, existence outside the “youth-maturity” opposition … This was the case when the example is contagious: the fear of age has gone and faith in one’s strength has come.
Of course, in real life, the faces of 50-year-olds are covered with wrinkles and their silhouette is not the same as that of top models. However, we are easily swayed by the illusion that we can “get old young.” We dream of a long life, but we do not want to see the stamp of time on our bodies and faces, we do not want to think about what lies ahead for us.
“If culture is dominated by the attitude towards the last third of life as the age of“ harvesting ”, when we can see the fruits of everything that we did and enjoy them, then it’s natural to take care of ourselves, to save strength longer,” explains psychotherapist Ekaterina Mikhailova. – But in our society, alas, the elderly are neglected, hence the fear of old age (which means dependence on children or on the state, illness and communication with doctors, poverty). It is believed that at this time it is already indecent to want something, and life turns into survival.
“I accepted my age when… I stopped thinking about him.”
Masha Traub, writer, 33
“The first thing I noticed when I looked at myself in the mirror after the birth of my daughter was two deep nasolabial folds. Not even folds, but furrows. And wrinkles between the eyebrows. Creases and wrinkles appeared from fear. For this little girl. For family. For my son, who was at home with a temperature while I was in the hospital. A few years ago, when he was born, I also looked in the mirror – it seemed that nothing had changed in me. And now my stomach hung, my hands in my forearms, which before my husband could clasp with his thumb and forefinger and, probably, fell in love with me for this, spread out. And, most importantly, I completely stuck to my daughter.
Mom arrived. She looked at me and silently went to the balcony to smoke. She didn’t like me, her daughter. We quarreled. I argued that I could no longer sit in a cafe and calmly drink coffee (the child will definitely knock over a glass), lie down and read a book (one of the children will probably fall down). That I’m not eighteen or twenty-five. And that’s hard for me, in the end. Mom smoked another cigarette and left. Silently.
I went on holiday with the kids. I had four of them: two of me and two of our friends. I am alone and have children who need to be fed, taken to the sea and educated … My husband came to us a month later. I walked down the road towards him. He didn’t recognize me until I called him. Mom arrived and, nodding, said: “You are my daughter. I knew you had character.” Of course, I have not become the same. I became different. Although my husband can still grab my forearm.”
“In our country, there is still no image of a safe and pleasant old age,” agrees Gestalt therapist Nifont Dolgopolov. – She frightens many not only with weakness, but also with problems associated with instability in society. Although we are accustomed to losing, because we lost a lot – money during the devaluation, human lives in the war and not only – we do not have a well-developed culture of losses. The idea that we inevitably lose something with age causes protest, a feeling that we have been deceived again.
Few of us do not try to make the passage of time less noticeable. To stay in the profession, to continue to be attractive, to feel better. Slenderness and mobility have become synonymous with youth even more than the absence of wrinkles. If I’m thin, I’m active; if I am active, it means that I am active, I have a future, therefore I am not old.
45-year-old Valery signed up for a fitness club a year ago for the first time in his life. For this professor of civil law, keeping fit means keeping his spirits up. “I feel energetic, I look younger than my years. It helps me to think more calmly about the future: training gives a sense of control over my life.
When we start to get old
- From the age of 10, vision weakens. But – the good news – the sense of smell and touch never degrade!
- At the age of 20, the first wrinkles appear and cognitive abilities (associated with learning, thinking and memory) begin to decline.
- Around the age of 30, physical strength decreases.
- Starting from the age of 35, the reproductive ability of women decreases.
- At the age of 40-50, the “fluid” intellect begins to weaken, providing a creative solution to new problems. But the “crystallized” intellect, which is responsible for referring to past experience, remains almost unchanged. In particular, the vocabulary and speech perception of 25-year-olds and 88-year-olds are practically the same.
Conflicting Desires
We want to maintain control so much that we feel confused and hurt when our older loved ones do not manage to live their years the way we would like. 48-year-old Leonid can hardly hold back tears, talking about his 74-year-old mother, to whom he had to invite a nurse: “Physically, she feels good, but she does not recognize anyone, she is delusional. It’s not life anymore! And I thought that my mother would live to be 90 years old and would tell family stories to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren … “
Speaking of age, let’s not forget that men and women feel it acutely at different moments. If menopause remains a critical stage in a woman’s life, then for men it is in demand at work, and age turns out to be an attack on their ability to work.
“The energy of necessity is a very important factor for a man,” confirms Nifont Dolgopolov. “I need to feel that I continue to be interesting, in demand.” The feeling that somewhere ahead of the lack of work, weakness and illness, the specter of financial difficulties – all this makes us perceive the years beyond the borders of youth, and even more so maturity, as a challenge and test, and not as a time to enjoy life.
There is a paradox here: with all our might to see the older generation in the radiance of wisdom, serene peace and acceptance of life, we are even more afraid to feel insecure, lonely and dependent. In addition, we are not always ready to apply our ideas about a bright old age to our own lives. 47-year-old Christina fondly recalls her grandmother, who at 68 was so beautiful “with her smooth bun of snow-white hair, without any makeup, and she always smelled somehow gentle and still bread and milk.”
Warm, cozy grandmother, as in the picture in the children’s book. In principle, Christina would be glad to be the same affectionate grandmother for her future grandchildren; she dislikes overactive ladies who require grandchildren to call them by their first names and are more like their mother. But she nevertheless does not plan to give up traveling, and even more so to give up tennis, which keep her figure like in thirty.
“I embraced my age when… I started living in the here and now.”
Natalie Goncharova, editor, 45 years old
“I turned 35 when, from a bored housewife, I became an assistant to the head of the fashionable Tea Club in the Hermitage Garden. It happened in the year of the millennium – the whole millennium was opening up ahead! If I had anything to dream about, it was about female happiness, which was stubbornly not given. The crisis of the company was superimposed on my “midlife crisis”: I was left without a job and was still alone.
And then life gave me a surprise: I fell in love, and he was only 26 years old. At first, I refused to believe in our relationship – 18 years difference! – but in the whirlpool that crushed everything that was the landmarks of my life, I held on to it, living the philosophical “here and now” as the only possible form of existence. The storm subsided, the way of life remained. And there was still an interest in time as an implicit, but living and organizing matter, to its nature and laws …
My friend is an amazing person, not too similar to his peers: in some ways he is more thorough and mature than me, in some ways he is still a child. We are busy building our country house together. I watch how my forecasts come true in the stock market, this new activity for me requires considerable endurance! And I’m getting used to my new “I”, more calm – perhaps because I have thrown a certain picture of myself out of my head: we are changing, but at any age we have many perspectives.
Letting go of the reins, gaining wisdom, getting to know ourselves better, focusing our desires and energy on projects that are truly dear to us – isn’t this the best that advanced age has to offer?
“It’s strange to get old, very strange. What you want is not available. But on the other hand, the incorporeal is weighty – thought, love and the distant echo of thunder, ”wrote one of the most remarkable singers of maturity, the poet David Samoilov. But we do not know how to appreciate this “but”, we are not ready to meet the new time and the new ourselves.
“The Western cult of youth at all costs pushes us to freeze in our image. But the Eastern ideology is focused on the diversity of life, – Nifont Dolgopolov reflects. – It is impossible to acquire and consume all the time, it is useful to be able to let go, to part. And not only with physical abilities (sharp sight and hearing, the ability to run without rest), but also with values. We become attached to what we have always valued and do not want to change. But in order to feel good at any age, you need to understand what is still important for us, and what can already be left. The main thing is not to be greedy.”
Only by coming to terms with the ephemeral, opening up to changes within and around us – in a word, by agreeing to grow old, can we truly live.
Finding yourself
Between the eternal (and previously lost) battle with the mills of time and the bitterness of resignation to the inevitable, we have to find our own balance point. This balance involves a new way of looking at oneself—what might be called “active acceptance.”
By the age of 40-45, our self-perception changes.
“We meet the parents of our adolescence; having reached the age at which we already remember them well, we ask ourselves questions about what they left us as a legacy, explains Ekaterina Mikhailova. “This meeting allows us to ask questions about our fears and desires: do we want to live life just like our parents did? Will we allow ourselves to live differently? There is a chance to comprehend our “dowry” and resolve internal conflicts.”
“We can create ourselves, including at the bodily level”
Andrei Konchalovsky
“Our body and the processes that take place in it all affect our thoughts. The young man does not think too much about the meaning of life. Until the age of 26, his actions are often insane, hormones push him to do what he would not do later – climb a drainpipe, for example. Usually a man becomes a philosopher when his testosterone drops.
Women have their own hormonal cocktails. It’s easy to see: you see 14-year-old girls walking down the street. You hear them scream! They have burning cheeks, red ears and terribly shiny eyes – they are drunk on hormones. At the beginning of life, the animal nature affects us tremendously, but over time we can bring it under control to some extent. Then the will, the mind determine more how a person behaves, and in many respects what happens to his body. And then we can create ourselves, including at the bodily level.”
After forty, the body and face change, and we seem to stop recognizing ourselves – for many of us this is a source of anxiety. In order not to become strangers to ourselves and to feel every age as part of a continuous line of life, you need to start mastering your future, gradually adapting to changes.
“For most women, this is a period of insecurity, they feel that their femininity is under threat,” says Nifont Dolgopolov. – But sexuality does not fade away every year: if we allow ourselves to show sexual energy, then we attract to ourselves, if not, we go out. Women think that men only want young girls, but this is not entirely true: they are attracted to those who accept themselves, their sensuality, who love life!
The time of the fortieth anniversary turns out to be a time of summing up, sadness, but also rebirth. Provided that we gave ourselves the opportunity to live the life that we chose, and not the one that we are forced to endure.
Step towards others
Another important condition is to meet other people halfway. Olga is 64 years old. For the second year she has been caring for children in the hospital: “It turned out that it was not at all difficult to negotiate with doctors and visit them twice a week. I read to them, we play, sometimes they ask me to take them to treatments or change their underwear. But it gives me so much energy to see that you are expected, that you are welcome. Sometimes it is enough to water the neighbors’ flowers while they are on vacation to feel needed.
“Now many neighbors leave me keys in the summer or bring their flower pots,” says 75-year-old Inna. “I rejoice when they bloom before my eyes.”
Direct energy to communication, maintaining the old circle and creating new connections; to realize oneself in creativity, whether it be a blog, a dance class or a garden; come up with new – non-commercial – projects and do it for your own pleasure; transfer knowledge and take care of those with whom life has treated more severely … There are many ways to a harmonious life, following which we will not be forever young, but – and this is much more important – we will remain living people. Let’s stay ourselves.
“The Boundaries of Youth are Retracted”
There is a natural evolution of society: we settle in the country of youth and do not leave it, says psychotherapist Margarita Zhamkochyan.
“Relatively recently, youth did not exist at all: children immediately became adults. After childhood was singled out as a separate age, adolescence appeared, and 18-year-olds began to be considered adults. Today we refer to them as “children” because they act like children; growing up is pushed even further, to the time of graduation, going to work or marriage.
The lengthening of youth began in the sixties: in order to differ from adults, rebellious youth invented their own subculture (music, cafes, clubs) and, most importantly, their own clothes – jeans. But, having become 40 years old, they still wore jeans, and the new young again had to look for something of their own. Then they cut their jeans, hoping that 40-year-old prosperous people would not walk in torn ones. But this fashion has passed to adults. Young people began to expose their bellies and get pierced … It didn’t help. Youth, of course, has a border, but when we grow up to it, we don’t want to cross it: the idea of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbstaying young is very attractive.